“I am sorry, sir,” remarked Tom, “to bring up this morning’s affair again. Yet I feel it due to myself to say that I have succeeded in my purpose of having Dawson, myself and the ‘Restless’ searched.”
“You have?” demanded Henry Tremaine, looking surprised though not altogether displeased.
“Yes, sir,” Randolph took the matter up. “As Captain Halstead insisted, after you had gone ashore I searched both young men, their baggage, their wardrobe lockers—every place and spot aboard—even to the gasoline tanks, sir. I found no trace of the money.”
As Tom Halstead’s glance swept the opposite side of the table he encountered the covert, sneering look of Oliver Dixon.
“Confound the fellow!” muttered young Halstead, under his breath. “I can sympathize with Joe’s desire to hit him!”
CHAPTER VI
THE ISLAND WHERE THERE WERE NO ALLIGATORS
IT was four days later.
Late the previous afternoon the party, traveling in two wagons, had reached Henry Tremaine’s Florida place at the head of Lake Okeechobee, an inland body of water, forty miles long and thirty broad, which lay at the northern extremity of the famous Florida Everglades.